Herschel Walker sits in the dining room of his Atlanta home, his blue shirt decorated with an American flag folded into a triangle. Emblazoned underneath are the words “Folds of Honor,” a charity that raises money for children of military members who’ve been killed or injured.
“I was really impressed with the work they did. I also really like the shirt,” Walker said with a disarming smile.
It’s easy to see why Walker, a pro-football running back who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, easily won Georgia’s Republican nomination for the US Senate in May, his first-ever run for office. So far, the 60-year-old candidate has scored endorsements both from former president and long-time friend Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — two men who don’t always see eye to eye. Although Walker’s opponent, Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock, is leading by 1.5 percentage points according to current polling averages, some experts feel the race is even tighter.
Walker admitted to me that he doesn’t sound like a typical politician. And he’s OK with that.
Most people, he said, are pretty sick of politicians, “and I’m sick and tired of it.”
“We talk about the border. And how long have we been talking about school choice? We’ve been talking about guns. We’ve been talking about this stuff forever. Well, maybe they need some outsiders to come in now with some better ideas.”
Walker’s Senate run sparked the recent exposé that he “secretly” fathered two sons he has not publicly acknowledged. One is 13 and lives in Texas with his mother; the other is 10 and was born to a woman who went to court for a paternity declaration and child support. (Walker also has a very visible 22-year-old son, Christian Walker, who has played a role in his political efforts, and a daughter, Emily, now in her late 30s, whom he fathered when he was in college.)
Walker was accused of hypocrisy, given his previous criticisms of “fatherless homes” in the black community.
“I want to apologize to the African-American community, because the fatherless home is a major, major problem,” Walker said in a September 2020 interview. In a 2019 interview with Diamond and Silk, he added that men need to go into neighborhoods and become “fathers of those fatherless” children.
But Walker insists he never hid his two sons. In fact, he disclosed all four of his children when Trump appointed him to the President’s Fitness Council — a federal advisory committee that promotes healthy living. But once Walker decided to run for public office, he said he didn’t talk about the youngest two out of respect for their privacy and the privacy of their mothers.
“I didn’t want them to become political props,” he said in a statement to The Post. “I knew when I got into politics that people would come after me, but I ask them to leave my kids out of this.